Jeremiah 14:10

GOD REFUSES TO HEAR THEM

"Thus saith Jehovah unto this people, Even so have they loved to wander; they have not refrained their feet: therefore Jehovah doth not accept them; now will he remember their iniquity, and visit their sins. And Jehovah said unto me, Pray not for this people for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt-offering and meal-offering, I will not accept them; but I will consume them by the sword, and by famine, and by pestilence."

Clarke summarized God's reply to the prayer as follows: "The measure of Israel's iniquity being now full, they must be punished. The nation is ripe for destruction; intercede not for them."[13]

"They have loved to wander ..." (Jeremiah 14:10) There is nothing innocent about this "wandering." Cheyne rendered it, "roving lawlessly about."[14]

"Pray not for this people ..." (Jeremiah 14:11). Twice previously, God gave Jeremiah this same instruction (Jeremiah 7:15; 11:14); but Jeremiah had been unable to stop praying. No mother ever quit praying for a wayward son, no matter how hopeless his wickedness became. It could be that God was not really forbidding Jeremiah to pray but that he was merely pointing out the uselessness of any further prayers on behalf of apostate Israel.

"Jehovah doth not accept them ..." (Jeremiah 14:10). Keil's comment on the reason why God would not then hear Israel is thus:

The reason was that they turned to God only in their need, but while their hearts still clung to their idols. Their prayers were only lip-service, and their sacrifices a soulless formality.[15]

While it is certainly true that Keil's excellent comment here applied to the vast majority of the condemned people, we must also agree with Payne Smith who wrote:

"It is not necessary to say with Keil that Israel's fasts and sacrifices were `heartless formalities.' There would have been those whom the chastisement had brought to repentance (also, those of the "righteous remnant" J.B.C.); and for these the lesson was a sterner one. There is a time when the most genuine repentance avails nothing to avert the temporal consequences of sin."[16]

"Sword... famine ... pestilence ..." (Jeremiah 14:12) This dreadful trio throughout the ages has been the perpetual destroyers of human life. They are frequently mentioned in scripture, as here and in Jeremiah 5:12; 14:15; 27:8; 29:18; 2 Samuel 24:13; Isaiah 51:19, etc.